Physical Controller Bug

[ProfK69]

While playing using a physical (X-Input)controller, when the 'B' button is pressed the side menu of the app opens, which usually opens when the back button is pressed. I made sure that it is not a exclusive issue due to something on my side as this only arises in bannerlator and other winlator forks and not in emulators like dolphin, eden, etc.

[github-actions]

🤖 Bannerlator AI

Your controller's B button is being delivered to Android as the BACK key, not as a gamepad button — that mapping is done by your device/ROM, not by the app. Bannerlator's in-game screen doesn't catch BACK events that come from a controller, so the system back action fires and opens the side menu. Emulators like Dolphin read the pad at a lower level and swallow every controller event, which is why they never show this; Winlator-family apps read the pad through Android key events, so the remap leaks through.

A side effect of the same cause: the game also doesn't receive B as a gamepad press, since the press arrives as BACK.

What you can do right now:

1. Check your device's gamepad/controller settings (game mode, button remap, or key layout) for a "B = back" option and turn it off if it exists — that's the only fix that works today.
2. There is no in-app setting to change what opens the side menu; the back key opening it is by design.

A proper fix would be a code change in the in-game key handling to swallow BACK events coming from a controller device (and feed them to the game as gamepad B). Whether that gets built is the maintainer's call; nothing has changed as a result of this reply.

Checked: app/src/main/java/com/winlator/star/XServerDisplayActivity.java:9395, 6326; app/src/main/java/com/winlator/star/inputcontrols/ExternalController.java:379

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ℹ️ Please read — about this project

Bannerlator is a personal build — made by me (The412Banner), for my own device, my own needs, and my own use.

It's a personal continuation of the Winlator Star Bionic project (star-emu/star) after it was discontinued and archived. None of the original developers are involved except me; it stands on their work plus cherry-picked commits from across the community — all credited in the repo.

This is NOT an official or general-purpose Winlator release. It is built and tuned for my hardware and my workflow, and published as-is purely in case it happens to be useful to someone else.

• No guarantee it works on any other device, GPU, or Android version.
• No support, and no commitment to fix anything that works for me but not for you. If a feature works on my device, it isn't broken — for me, which is what this build is for.
• Bug reports / feature requests for setups I don't run may simply be closed. That's not personal; this just isn't a community-support project.
• You're free to use, modify, fork, or share it (GPL-3.0). If it doesn't work on your setup, that's expected — it wasn't built for it.

Cited from the Bannerlator codebase. For a follow-up, open a new question.